Duke Head Coach Joanne P. McCallieOpening Statement:
“I thought we just got after some things we need to get after relative to being aggressive on the boards. I love 24 offensive rebounds and if that were 30 I would be really happy, 25 free throw attempts, getting to the line and also the assists approaching 20. We are working on things; I really thought there was great leadership out there. I thought Tricia [Liston] really set the tone. She was consistent in here rebounding; she rebounded for the entire game, start to finish, and I love when players do that. I think any player can rebound for a half, but to keep up that endurance and go get the ball for 40 minutes, or close to 40 minutes is great. I thought Elizabeth [Williams] was tremendous in the time she had, 17 minutes. Eight rebounds in 17 minutes, I think she is hungry to play and just getting right back to form. It was a good team win, but we are excited to hit the road. It has been nice to be home, but it is nice to take a trip.”

On Offensive Rebounding:
“At halftime, we only had six offensive rebounds, it is important to note that, so we picked up 18 in the second half. You can imagine what we would be like if we could pull 18 and 18 in games. We have emphasized and we have talked about, you got to do the dirty work. It is kind of substance over style. Style is great. We get a lot of style points, because we have a lot of great players, but that is not going to take you to the promised land. Substance is, and having that many offensive rebounds in the second half indicates what we can do.”

On Ka’lia Johnson:
“Ka’lia did some nice things. She was attacking, I love that she got to the free throw line. I don’t like the two rebounds though. In her position, for what she does, she really has to rebound for us, but I loved the fact that she got the steals she did, and the hustle she plays with, so Ka’lia is working on her game, and bringing something every time.”

On Rebounding:
“Anybody who rebounds can have an enormous role…so there is this real emphasis on everyone pulling their weight with rebounding. Then just letting the rest of the game come to you. It is amazing, anybody that rebounds plays great basketball. I have never seen anyone with 12 rebounds who didn’t play a great game. It just goes that way, and I think sometimes we get that backwards, like points are the end-all. Right now, it is being able to do the dirty work, out fight people, out scrap people as these games are tough, and we are going into some tough games coming up, very physical, so if we can dictate that, we are in good shape.”

On Overcoming 2nd Half Shooting Percentage:
“Look at our shooting percentage, 59% in the first half, and then you see a drop to 40% [in the second half]. We missed some layups, as you noted in the second half, we missed some stuff, but that is what you have to understand. We might miss some stuff that is why the defense and rebounding are so important. It is funny, we dominated in the second half defending and rebounding and you didn’t really feel our 41% shooting. Nobody would notice that and that is important to understand, yeah we are 48% for the game, but you have to be ready for anything. You can’t be a prima donna team who has to shoot 50% or the game is over, you have to be able to do it all.”

Duke Junior Tricia ListonOn the team’s rebounding in the second half:
“Coach P at halftime got on us a little bit for the rebounding because our goal was to have 25 o-boards and we were nowhere close as she said earlier so that kind of sparked a fire under us a little bit. Haley [Peters] came out right away and got two or three [rebounds] on one possession and Elizabeth came in and got two or three in one possession and I think that got everyone going. I don’t know how many we had in the second half but it was definitely more than we had in the first half and we were just trying to stay aggressive and crash the o-boards, get the defensive boards and try to get it going from there.”

On Duke’s energy and movement on defense:
“Right now we feel pretty good. We still have so much to do on defense more than what we’ve shown so far. We are trying to constantly move and keep our hands up, that’s a big thing, just so we look like we’re long and we’re bigger and there’s not as many openings. We still can do some things better and being constantly moving is something that will help us shut down other teams. I think that all comes from our energy though and talking and ‘I got next pass, I got here’ and that allows everyone to just shift, the whole defense is moving and it creates a hard time for the offense.”

Duke Sophomore Elizabeth WilliamsOn how she’s feeling getting back from injury:
“I feel really good. It’s nice to get back playing. I’m gradually increasing [minutes], so I got 17 today. I’ll just keep going up. When I’m playing, I feel good. I’m not worried about my legs or anything, which is good so I can focus on rebounding.”

On getting into early foul trouble while on minute restrictions:
“I cut my minutes short a little early in the first half but it happens and having that time to sit down, I was able to come out in the second half with more injury.”

On coming off the bench:
“It’s different. Just this whole off season and pre-season, having a different perspective, knowing that nothing’s really guaranteed, I try to just play my hardest each time I’m on the court.”

Valparaiso Head Coach Tracey DorowOpening Statement:
“Obviously we ran into a very good Duke team. I thought they played extremely well. I thought they executed well, put a lot of pressure on us, got a lot of tips on balls, got a lot of turnovers. You look at their points off turnovers, they had 36 points off of turnovers. That is a big difference in the ball game right there. I really thought our kids did a great job of scrapping, hustling and never giving up. I am proud of our team for doing that without our starting point guard, a senior point guard who averages 38 minutes a game and is really the glue to telling the rest of the girls what to do and when to do it. I thought we bounced back pretty well, but it’s a big struggle and we are growing in that area.”

On being overmatched rebounding:
“I don’t think it hurt us. I think it gave us some confidence that we could go in there and rebound, but at the same time if you look we were oversized in the size category in every spot. There is a reason that you are ranked No. 4 in the country and were No. 3. You have very good recruits, very good players and Coach P. has done a great job of getting those kids to play together and I thought our kids battled hard, but we were definitely overmatched and had hard time scoring over the bigs. So, we were settling for a lot outside shots and you are right they didn’t fall. I don’t think that caused us to play differently, but we weren’t able to get those boards like we were in previous games.”

On the strategy:
“I felt like we got some very good looks, but a couple of times we rushed because they did try to fly at us and a couple of times they blocked long shots when we took too long to take the shot. For the most part, I was proud of the shot selection we got. We are definitely looking to drive and kick instead of drive and get blocked, which that happened a few times as well. At the same time, we have to do a better job of communicating on the perimeter. Down the stretch, I thought we did that. A couple of our freshmen were calling for the ball when they were open on the weak side and got the shots in rhythm. A couple of them went down, a couple of them didn’t. I am proud of the way they played together, just didn’t shoot the ball very well.”

On expectations coming in:
“We wanted to come in and compete well. I thought we competed hard, I don’t know if we competed well. We lost by 45 points. At the same time, it does hurt, we are still trying to find our way with a new coaching staff and without our starting point guard. I have to tell you Laura Richards is incredible. Her stat line may not be impressive, but as a leader she is incredible. She really does give the rest of the team confidence, so when she gives us confidence that changes the way we run our offense. There were times out there that we would run our zone offense and I couldn’t even tell what we were running. Definitely, Duke’s defense took us out of what we wanted to do. Fortunately we moved the ball pretty well, but we did turn it over a lot. There were times we got frazzled and that hurts not to have a senior point guard out there to get us refocused, calmed down. She would have handled the ball, she doesn’t really turn the ball over at all.”

On Laura Richards’ Status:
“She is out with a concussion and it is her second concussion in two years, so it’s at least 10 days. She got it in the IUPUI game when we were up by five and ended up losing by six. That just goes to show you she is all over the place. She was on the all-defensive team in the Horizon League last year. It hurts. We hope to have her back by the first of December, but if not we are obviously learning with a younger lineup right now and just playing around with some lineups and I am proud of the way our kids have adjusted.”